The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
It is commonly required in the field of Information Technology to provide a service that searches through data sources. The data source herein may refer to data and/or document(s) on the Internet, intranet, storage devices, and so on. In order to use a search engine, a user seeking information on a desired topic generally inputs a search query consisting of keyword(s) or phrase(s) relevant to the topic into the search interface of the search engine. In response, the search engine typically displays a report with a prioritized list of links pointing to relevant documents containing the search keywords. Oftentimes, a short summary of text i.e., extract/snippet is also included for each result. The snippet is that portion or portions of the text in the document that contain the keywords from the search query.
Sometimes, the extract may comprise of symbols or codes and the meaning or interpretation of the symbols or codes may not be part of the search result extract. However, the document may comprise of a legend with information on how to interpret the symbols or codes. Thus, the user has to navigate to the original document to fully understand the snippet. This process may be complicated and time consuming for the user.
In view of the above drawbacks, there remains a need for an effective method of constructing search results.